Patricia Gouvêa

When one reckons the scale of a transmutable time where destruction and disappearance are directly related to birth or emergence of the new, one can finally understand the haste of life and its ability to overcome death. In the domain of several cultures, this ability identifies itself in reproduction and in fertility rituals, and it is told about in mythologies that we got to know throughout times such as in the story of goddess Hel who inspired the creation of the Fenda series. In Nordic mythology, Hel is the goddess of both, life and death. She teaches the dead how to live from the end to the beginning of life. The dead become younger and younger until they get ready to be reborn again returning to life. The recovery of the divine takes place in the Hel’s darkness.
The domain of photography as a support language reinforces the proposition of this series, when we take into consideration that photography brings in itself the frozen time concept – the death of flux. Fenda brings the desire of transforming this support into life pulsation.

Patricia Gouvêa was born in 1973 in Rio de Janeiro, where she lives and works. Visual artist, works with photography, video, installation and urban intervention. Her work as an artist prioritizes moving photography and images and their potential interfaces, where the notion of time is one of the main pillars of her research. From 2005 to 2009 she was a member of the Grupo DOC (Desordem Obssessiva Compulsiva) collective, which promoted scores of actions in Brazil and abroad. She has published 2 books “Membranas de Luz: os tempos na imagem contemporânea” [“Membranes of Light: times in contemporary imagery”] (2011) and “Imagens Posteriores” [Posterior Images] (2012). She is an active member of the Brazilian scene as founder and director of Ateliê da Imagem, a cultural space in Rio de Janeiro dedicated to research, reflection and production of images.